Active vs.  Passive Voice

The verbs you choose have more impact on your writing than almost anything else.  Yet many people when writing use passive verbs that make the writing seem indirect and unemotional.

For instance a man says to his wife “the boss found Bob taking money from the safe so he fired him.”  The next morning he goes to work and writes this memo: due to the indiscretion of one of our employees it was found necessary by top management to terminate his employment.   You can see which one is more exciting and that's what it's all about.  To make your writing as exciting as possible switch from the passive to the active voice whenever possible.

This may sound hard but it isn't.  The real culprits are the verbs: are, be, is, was, were, has been and so forth.  These verbs have absolutely no meaning by themselves and make the reader feel like he isn't involved.  To make your  writing active and exciting go through a piece of writing and put a red circle around every are, be., is, was, were, has been, and so forth.  Then change the sentence.  Here are a few examples. 

• The car was driven by me is passive.  Change to I drove the car

• The report was written by the manager.  Change to the manager wrote the report.

• The ball was thrown by the quarterback.  Change to the quarterback threw the ball.

• The check has been mailed.  Change to I mailed the check.

• A dream was had by Martin Luther King.  Change to Martin Luther King had a dream.

You won't be able to take all passive verbs out of your writing and you don't want to.  A good general rule is to make your writing sound as direct as possible without making an awkward, when it begins to sound passive vendor or indirect start inserting active verbs.  Here are some sentences that should be left as they are.

·         His career had been subject to exciting ups and downs

·         Firing for economy may also be necessary.

·         The building itself is more important than what we intend to do with it.

·         The business is fighting for its life

This again is the beginning of another facet of this newsletter.  One of the essential elements in all writing is revision. Non-fiction writing is communication and that means saying and clearly with the fewest number words.  In other words for nonfiction that you expect to publish say it simply.

In following columns, we will address many important aspects on revision techniques.